Generally, various physiological functions are regulated by dynamic interactions between various physiological active materials. Abnormal occasions when these interactions do not properly occur or molecules of which interactions are not desired interact with each other, may result in diseases. Generally, two proteins having complementary structures interact with each other, and a physiological active compound specifically interacts with a protein having tertiary structure at a particular site. Since the physiological active compound regulates a function of a heterologous protein, the physiological active compound may be a candidate material for a therapeutic agent which may diagnose, prevent, or treat and alleviate a disease associated with the protein.
A study has been continued for screening a target or a therapeutic agent of disease by analyzing a protein-protein interaction and an interaction between a protein and a small molecule compound. As an example, techniques such as phagedisplay (Sche at al., Chem. Biol., 6: 707, 1999), yeast two-/three-hybrid assay (Licitra et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 93: 12817, 1996), and parallel analysis of a yeast strain having heterologous deletion (Zheng et al., Chem. Biol., 11: 609, 2004) may be included. However, these techniques have problems such as high background, false-positive, and low sensitivity. Also, the test result is not 100% reliable for reaction using non mammalian cells or in vitro reaction.
Korean Patent Publication No. 2009-0018585, which is derived to overcome such problems, relates to a method for investigating presence and absence of interactions between a bait protein and a prey protein through a difference in a luminescence pattern due to a cluster formation of self assembled fluorescence nanoparticles after simultaneously expressing a 1st fusion protein and a 2nd fusion protein in one cell line, wherein the 1st fusion protein is a ferritin protein capable of self-assembly to which a fluorescence protein and the bait protein is linked, and the 2nd fusion protein is a ferritin protein to which the same fluorescence protein and the prey protein is linked.